


Knowing Me, Knowing You

by CommaSplice



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Gen, Sister-Sister Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 18:12:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5343659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommaSplice/pseuds/CommaSplice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya and Sansa Stark have never gotten along. Margaery Tyrell has known what she wanted since she was 15. Shireen Baratheon has hardened herself against hope. Now they are at the same university and all of that is about to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knowing Me, Knowing You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



* * *

The dorm room was the final indignity for Arya.

It was bad enough that her parents had wanted her to go to the same university as Sansa, although to be fair, as Jon had pointed out, it _was_ a place with a really strong fencing team and a great math program. But still. It was going to be like school all over again where everyone would go on and on about how pretty and smart Sansa was and how lucky Arya must be to have a sister like her. Then there would be the inevitable disappointment when they learned that Arya was the exact opposite of Sansa Stark. 

Sansa would not be living in a tiny dorm room or having to shower in a communal bathroom. Since her junior year, she’d been living off campus in an apartment with a friend. Arya had gotten to see it for the first time with Mum and Dad when they’d dropped Sansa and her wardrobe off (how many cute tops did a person need?) before heading to campus. If Sansa’s room at home was picture perfect, her apartment was like something out of a magazine. 

“You had your chance,” Mum had told her when Arya grumbled about it. “When we were redoing the upstairs, you told us you liked your room just the way it was.”

Arya chewed her lip. “That’s not the point.”

“You can always fix up your dorm room.” Dad waved his arms around in a vague way. 

Of course Mum had all sorts of ideas, but as far as Arya was concerned, some colorful throw pillows and a bunch of framed prints were never going to make up for the fact that Sansa and her flat mate were free to come and go as they pleased, totally without adult supervision, living their perfect lives probably having perfect dates with perfect guys like in some stupid TV show. Not that Arya cared about that stuff. What really rankled was that Sansa and her friend had not just their own private bathroom, but had a dog—an actual dog. 

All too soon, Mum and Dad had to leave, and Arya realized that for the first time in her life she was going to be alone, and that it had been stupid to waste all that time arguing about how a throw rug was not going to make this room any better. Sansa might live less than a mile away, but it might as well have been Sunspear. They had never gotten along and Arya knew they were never going to get along. 

Arya was just coming back from storing Needle in the fencing team’s armory when she heard voices in the room. That had to be Shireen Baratheon and her parents. Shireen had sent Arya an email over the break introducing herself. Arya had meant to reply, but stuff had gotten in the way and she’d forgotten all about it until it was really too late. She hadn’t even read it, not beyond the first few sentences. There had been too much to do and not enough time to do it. 

Shireen was going to be one of those girls. Arya could tell just by her profile and her clearly carefully chosen outfit. It didn’t matter that her parents looked like they were pretty miserable people. She was probably the kind of kid who was super popular in school, for whom everything always went really well, and who was liked by everyone and everything. If Sansa could actually be bothered to come by and see how Arya was doing, she was going take one look at Shireen and tell Arya how lucky she was to have such a great roommate.

So strong was her conviction that when Shireen turned to face her, it took a full twenty seconds for Arya’s scowl to give way to shock.

* * *

“It can’t be that bad, Arya.” Sansa wasn’t used to this side of her little sister. As annoying as Arya almost always was, anxiety was not an adjective easily applied to her. It was weird too, having Arya seek out her help. If Arya went to anyone, she went to Jon or maybe Dad. But for the first time in maybe ever, Arya had called her wanting advice.

“You don’t understand.” Arya dropped the contents of her fourth sugar packet into her Red Eye. “I gawked at her like she was some kind of circus freak. She won’t look at me anymore.”

Sansa sipped at her nonfat vanilla latte. She debated saying something to Arya about the Freshman Fifteen, but decided that perhaps this was not the best time.

“How hard is it to get another roommate?” Arya asked.

“If you do that, you’re just going to make her feel worse,” Sansa pointed out.

Arya scowled. “I didn’t think about that.”

“Look, it’s really simple. Tell her you’re sorry for staring. That you were taken aback and that you’d like to start over and you hope that—what are you doing?”

“Taking notes. Say that again, slower.”

Sansa repeated her advice, watching as Arya laboriously printed each word out on one of the paper napkins. “This is common sense.”

“You always know the right thing to say. When I try, it always comes out wrong.” Arya looked up from the napkin. “Rickon said I should just tell her I’m a giant dork.”

She should have known that she was the last person Arya had gone to. She had to be. Because Rickon was about as helpful in social matters as a Dornishman would be about snowboarding. “Just stick to what I said.”

Arya capped her pen. “All right. I’ll try that.”

“How are your classes going?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“It’s not like high school,” Sansa warned. “The professors won’t hunt you down if your papers are late or if your work isn’t good enough.” It had been one of the harder lessons she’d learned. She had been so used to being _the_ A+ student, but here everyone had been an A+ student. If she had experienced difficulty, she could only imagine what Arya would be facing.

Arya was busy folding the paper napkin and stuffing it into her backpack. “I don’t have papers this semester. Just lots of tests and exams.”

“You’ll still have to study really hard. You can’t leave it to the last minute.”

“Yeah, I know.” The edge was back in Arya’s voice. “I’m not stupid, Sansa. I know all about that stuff.”

“What are you taking?”

Arya ticked off a list of courses with prefixes that made Sansa shudder. Three of them were in the Math department. Numbers came easy to Arya. They always had. She’d gotten nearly perfect SAT scores on the math part and pretty good ones on the verbal, which wasn’t at all fair, because she hadn’t even studied, let alone taken the prep courses Mum and Dad had begged her to take. No, Arya had just shown up, plowed through it all, and then gone out running as if her entire future hadn’t been riding on any of it. 

“I’m just saying that you’ll be shocked at how quickly everything comes due. I could help you if you’ll let me.”

Arya drained her still piping hot coffee. “I know. I have an advisor. He warned me about that stuff. I’ve got apps and things.” She waved at her phone. “I’m already in a study group.”

Sansa wondered just how long _that_ would last. 

“Have you taken your math requirement yet?”

She could feel her smugness melting away like the whipped cream in her drink. She’d put it off and put it off, but sooner or later she was going to have to take something. “I have time.”

“Just a few more semesters.” Arya plunked the paper cup down in front of her. “You should get it over with. I could help you if you’ll let me,” she said in a perfect imitation of Sansa.

Sansa felt the intended sting. It would be impossible to explain to Margaery just how much something like that hurt. Margaery would never get it. Her siblings actually supported her. Five minutes, Sansa thought. For the first time in their entire lives, that hostility had been missing for five whole minutes. It had been almost . . . nice, but now it was gone and Arya was back to being a brat again.

* * *

**Devan: So you’re hiding from your roommate???**  
 **Shireen: I’m avoiding her. There’s a difference.**  
 **Devan: This isn’t like you.**  
 **Shireen: You said it was going to be different from high school.**

Devan hadn’t been the only one. Her cousin, Edric, had said the same thing. So had a lot of people. At university, everyone had kept telling her, people would let go of all the stupid high school meanness and start behaving like grownups. They wouldn’t point at her and gawk. They wouldn’t ask stupid questions. They wouldn’t be cruel. 

Shireen wanted to kick herself for not knowing better. 

**Devan: It will be. You just got a bad first roommate. Not everyone is like her. Look I hate to do this, but I have to go. I’ll call you later, ok?**

Shireen signed out of Skype. Her roommate wasn’t around, which was just fine as far as Shireen was concerned. Ever since that disastrous first moment of their meeting, Arya Stark seemed to spend as much time as humanly possible anywhere but their dorm room. 

She checked her email to see if she’d gotten a response on what would be involved in getting a new roommate. Of course no one at this stupid college had gotten back to her yet. Aside from the spam, there were three other emails. One was from Edric, who thought she should try to stick it out. It would get better, he wrote. 

Edric was an optimist. 

There were emails from her parents too. Her parents had never been good at communicating verbally and they were somehow even worse with the written word. They didn’t know about her roommate. Her father would just tell her to endure, that she was Shireen Baratheon and that she had nothing to be ashamed of, which was true, but it didn’t make it hurt less. Her mother would use this as a reason to get her to transfer to one of the colleges back home. She had lobbied very hard for Shireen to stay on Dragonstone—where they could protect her, which wasn’t what Shireen wanted.

The cardboard box on Arya’s still unmade bed caught Shireen’s eye. It wasn’t enough that practically every other day her parents did Skype calls or that Arya’s brothers were always Facetiming her, now she was getting care packages too. Shireen had overheard a few of the calls. They all seemed so . . . so normal. Like something off a TV show. 

Shireen didn’t ever remember her home life being normal. She was actually pretty sure it never had been. It wasn’t fair that someone like Arya got to have it so easy. 

And then as if thinking about her conjured her up, Arya was back. 

Shireen pulled open one of her textbooks. Her father had written in his email that he hoped she was taking her academic work seriously. Shireen wondered at him sometimes. She’d had maybe a total of four friends throughout school, had never been home late once, had never gotten into anything remotely resembling trouble, had never received anything below an A- in her life, and he was worried about her grades? Like she was suddenly going to forget who she was and turn into a party girl. 

“Can I talk to you?”

“May I.”

“What?”

Shireen didn’t bother looking up. “Can means you’re able to. May means you’re asking permission.”

“Oh. Uh. May I talk to you?”

“No.” There was a part of her that knew she was being a bitch, but Shireen decided she didn’t care. Arya was going to tell her that she wanted to apologize. She’d say that she was sorry for gawking, that she hadn’t meant to cause any hurt, and that she wanted to start over. Then Arya would say something stupid about not realizing that Shireen’s variant of greyscale wasn’t contagious, that she’d been reading about it, and in a ton of wonderment, would start spouting statistics or telling Shireen about these new treatments—as if Shireen didn’t know pretty much all there was to know about greyscale. 

But Arya wasn’t getting that preachy or earnest face. She wasn’t moving. Instead of going back to her side of the room, she was rummaging through her backpack and pulling out and putting back various objects. Finally she smoothed out a crumpled Starbucks paper napkin with pen scrawled all over and consulted it, chewing her lip as she read it silently.

What was frustrating was just how unnecessary all of this was. Shireen had deliberately attached a picture of herself in her introductory email. She’d labored over every word. She’d explained everything, but for the bulk of it, Shireen had talked about herself, who she was, what she liked to do, trying to make it really clear that she was not her disease. And then in the last part, she’d given Arya an out—she’d actually written that if Arya wanted another roommate she wouldn’t mind. 

Well, clearly it had all been wasted effort. Arya hadn’t even bothered to read the email, let alone reply. 

Still Arya stood there, turning the napkin over and sideways, peering at it like it had been written in some long dead tongue and it contained the mysteries of the world. 

Then Arya scrunched up the napkin and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. “You need to know something about me.”

“I don’t need to know—”

“—I am a giant dork.”

* * *

Margaery didn’t see what the problem was. “I’ve been dying to meet your sister,” she said to Sansa.

“Gods, why?” 

“Because she’s your sister. I want to meet all your siblings, but since Arya is the only one nearby, we should start with her.”

Sansa didn’t look up immediately. Instead she focused on cleaning her paint brushes. Only when she finished did she reply. “We could all go out for coffee or pizza or something if you really want to meet Arya. We don’t have to drag her along to the dinner with your brother and his wife.”

It occurred to Margaery that Sansa might not realize that Garlan and Leonette had specifically extended the invitation to dinner to include Sansa’s sister, but when she relayed this, Sansa just shook her head. 

“Look, she’s nothing like me. She’s a tomboy and wild and—”

“It will be fine,” Margaery assured her.

Sansa got that set to her jaw that meant she was determined, and for the rest of the afternoon proceeded to regale Margaery with story after story of Arya’s escapades. From the stories and the photographs produced from Sansa’s phone, Arya’s Instagram, and a cloth-covered shoebox filled with snapshots, Margaery was beginning to get the picture. 

“She’s in university now, though, and you even said how grownup she seemed when you went out for coffee with her,” Margaery pointed out. “And it’s not like we’re going somewhere really high end. Besides, even if we were, my brother and sister-in-law won’t care if she uses the wrong fork. It will be fine,” she repeated. 

“It is going to be an epic disaster, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

So it was clearly something of a shock to Sansa when Arya showed up at the restaurant, on time, neatly groomed, and wearing a totally appropriate skirt and sweater combination. 

“Is this new?” Sansa asked, fingering the dark red fabric of her sister’s skirt.

“Nope.” Arya was busy looking around the bar area while they waited for Garlan and Leonette. “So how long have you guys known each other?”

Margaery smiled easily. “We met sophomore year.” She and Sansa weren’t telling anyone about their relationship just yet. Margaery had been out since she was fifteen. Sansa had recently come out to her parents, and said everything had been fine. She was planning on telling the rest of her family when she went home for Intersession, and that was all right, Margaery thought. They were figuring out who they were as a couple and she liked having Sansa all to herself. It was like some delightful secret. 

“I would have remembered this outfit,” Sansa insisted. “It really suits you,” she said with obvious surprise. 

Arya shrugged. “I borrowed it from my roommate.” 

“Oh, so my advice worked?” Sansa asked.

“Not exactly.” She was about to say more when Garlan and Leonette showed up.

Margaery could tell Sansa was anxious. Every time Arya opened her mouth, Sansa tensed, although Margaery really couldn’t see why. Arya seemed a little kooky at times, but she was smart and funny and everyone but Sansa seemed to be enjoying themselves. 

Garlan wanted to know about Arya’s intended major and career plans. He nodded approvingly at everything she was saying especially when Arya started talking about something called mathematical modeling. Most of it went over Margaery’s head and from Sansa’s expression, she suspected all of this was brand new information for her too. 

And then he turned to Sansa. “Margaery says you’re an art student?”

“Yes. I—”

“—That’s a very competitive field. Only a few people can make a good living at it.”

The smile on Sansa’s face died. “I don’t paint because I want to be wealthy,” she said in a voice so low it was nearly impossible to hear. 

One of the things Margaery loved about Sansa was how gentle she was, but it wasn’t a quality that her family had ever encouraged in any of them and although Garlan was kind enough when Sansa grew flustered and couldn’t formulate an answer, he pointed out that successful artists needed to be advocates for themselves and then wondered at her parents for encouraging her in this career path.

“Mum and Dad know that Sansa is really talented,” Arya said, her grey eyes narrowing. 

Margaery concurred. “Her oils are amazing and she’s been featured in some student—”

Garlan seemed to know he had made a misstep. He held up a hand, backed off, said something about Sansa having plenty of time, and turned the conversation.

Afterward, when Garlan and Leonette had left them, Margaery and Sansa walked Arya back toward campus. 

“Sansa has been drawing and painting for like forever,” Arya said. 

“Arya, shut up. You don’t know anything about—”

“—Garlan didn’t mean anything by it,” Margaery began. “It’s just my family is very goal-oriented. They want us to be practical.”

Arya zipped up her jacket. “So do ours.”

“I mean about careers and jobs. They’re very hands-on about that kind of thing.”

The two sisters, who up until this point had been largely antagonistic to each other, froze. 

Sansa turned to face Margaery. “And our parents aren’t? We’ve both had part-time jobs since we were sixteen and before that I babysat and Arya had a paper route. We know the value of a dragon. Who do you think taught us that?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Sansa doesn’t need to be a hardass to be successful,” Arya said drawing herself up and somehow seemed a lot more imposing than her 5’1” frame had first suggested. “If she needs someone to be pushy, I can be pushy for her.”

Margaery started to apologize.

“I could be your agent, Sansa,” Arya said slowly, paying absolutely no attention to Margaery.

“My agent?”

“For a 20% fee.”

“If the going rate is 15%, yours should be lower because I’m your sister.”

“That’s exactly why it should be higher.”

They both laughed then and just like that the tension dissipated, but later that night when Margaery and Sansa were alone, Sansa brought it up again. 

“Mum and Dad are not flaky.”

“I know. They seem very nice.” She hadn’t spent more than fifteen or twenty minutes in their company, but that wasn’t the point. 

Sansa turned on her side so that she was facing Margaery. “Dad says it’s their job to help us be the best people we can be. To help us figure out how to realize our dreams. You’ll understand when they visit for homecoming. They’re good parents, okay?”

* * *

Sansa was right. The Starks were not flaky. If anything, they were pretty sharp. Margaery had the distinct impression that Catelyn Stark, in particular, was nobody’s fool. And if Sansa’s father was a very quiet man, Margaery was gradually coming to understand that it didn’t mean he was stupid. He asked careful questions of both his daughters and he really listened to the answers.

It was clear that Sansa and her sister adored him.

“You’re lucky,” she confessed to Sansa while they walked over to see Arya’s fencing bout. “My father . . . he’s not . . .”

“He’s not what?” Sansa asked.

Margaery didn’t finish. Arya’s roommate was within earshot and while Margaery was willing to talk about her father’s failings with Sansa, she wasn’t about to do it in front of strangers.

Sansa said there had been some problems between Arya and her roommate, but whatever those were, they were over because where Arya went, Shireen went too. 

“Her parents couldn’t make Homecoming,” Arya had announced. “So I said she could hang out with us.”

And that was that. The Starks went out of their way to include Shireen Baratheon in pretty much everything.

The Starks had brought their two youngest children and whatever initial shyness the boys had about being on a university campus in a strange city, they lost very quickly. They were all very nice to Margaery, but there were moments when it all got a little overwhelming.

“But you know what big families are like,” Sansa said when Margaery confessed this.

Before Margaery could reply, Sansa’s brothers literally dragged her off. 

Margaery found herself hanging back with Shireen quite a bit. 

Shireen was an only child and she too seemed bewildered by all the noise and confusion at times. 

“I’m not used to this,” Margaery said. 

“I thought you said you had three brothers.”

Margaery nodded. “I do, but we’re more spread out in age and less . . .” She was about to say “wild,” but stopped herself. “We live with our grandmother and she’s very particular. We’re all very close, just not quite so . . . high-spirited.” She watched Sansa give one of her brothers a light-hearted shove and then skip away. “We’re more . . . structured about everything. I guess we’re more of a unit.”

Shireen paused and cocked her head. “But Arya talks about her family all the time. Her parents call her a couple of times a week.”

“No, I meant . . . like . . . well, for instance, when I was picking a major, my family helped me choose so that I would go into something that would help the family.” 

Shireen resumed walking. “So they told you what to pick for a major?”

“Well, it was a discussion.” Except it hadn’t been, Margaery realized. Her grandmother and father had been talking and then somehow it had been an assumed course of action she would take. “I like political science,” she said more defensively than she had planned. “It will help with law school and then I can launch my career in politics.” And she _did_ want to be a politician, even if it was something that Gran and Father wanted for her too. 

Shireen had nothing to say to this.

Margaery tried again, “It’s too bad about your parents not being able to come.”

Shireen shrugged. “They wouldn’t like something like Homecoming.” She watched Sansa’s parents for a few minutes. “I always wondered what that would be like.”

“Having siblings?”

“Having parents who got along. Mine don’t.” Shireen spoke in a very calm, matter-of-fact manner that suggested she had come to terms with it. 

“Oh, I’m sorry. Are they divorced?”

Shireen shrugged again. “It’s complicated.” There was a sigh. “Really complicated.”

Margaery waited, but Shireen’s manner suggested she was done talking about herself. Questions about her major went nowhere. Shireen was more than willing to discuss structural engineering, but what Margaery knew about the subject could fit on the head of a pin. 

“It’s okay,” Shireen said. “Most people don’t understand it either. My mother keeps telling me I should major in architecture. She says it would be easier.”

“Because there are more jobs?” 

“Because she thinks it would be safer.”

Margaery frowned. “Is structural engineering dangerous?”

“It’s because of my scars,” Shireen said, keeping her gaze resolutely forward as they walked. “My mother thinks that if I’m in a predominantly male field will I’ll get insulted more.”

“People can be so cruel,” Margaery began. 

The look Shireen directed toward her was withering and if she didn’t exactly say _as if you would know anything about being ridiculed_ it was clear she was thinking that, but after a few seconds, she shrugged it off. “At least with the type of guys who are in engineering, it’s direct. I know where I stand. Besides, I don’t want to be an architect. My mother means well, but it can be smothering. I’m not a little girl anymore. I can’t stay under her wing forever.” She nodded toward the Starks. “Arya’s lucky. Her parents aren’t afraid to let her fail.”

* * *

They sat side by side on Shireen’s bed. Arya would have moved the papers and laundry she hadn’t put away yet, but Shireen said it was just easier to use hers. Arya was going to be going home with her for the first two weeks of the Intersession and Shireen wanted to show her pictures of her family and friends even though the visit wouldn’t be for six-and-a-half weeks.

“That’s Devan and Edric,” Shireen explained. “I’ve been dating Devan since last year although I’ve known him for a long time.”

It seemed to Arya that Shireen was a little nervous about this visit although Arya wasn’t really sure why. They were friends now, had been ever since the time when she’d gotten bored in the dining hall and had started constructing a mock-up of Winterfell’s ruins using only mashed potatoes, when Shireen had slowly said, “It’s true. You really are a giant dork.”

“Edric looks a lot like Gendry.”

Shireen nodded. “Edric’s one of Uncle Robert’s other kids.” 

Arya had met Shireen’s uncle a bunch of times over the years. He was her father’s best friend, but despite her parents’ best efforts to screen them from his seamier side, she’d learned that Robert Baratheon had spread his DNA pretty frequently and widely over the country. Gendry had asked Arya to keep his parentage quiet, but Arya had a good idea Shireen had already figured it out. 

“And those are some of Devan’s other brothers: Steffon and Stan. Stan’s our age.”

“Cool.” Arya examined another image. This time it was of a cliff face of black obsidian. “Wow! Where is this?”

Shireen looked. “That’s near Windwyrm.”

“This is so cool.” She exclaimed after picture after picture. Arya was excited about this trip, not only because it would be fun to just hang out with Shireen, but because Dragonstone looked so neat. “Oooh, is that a zip-line? Can I do that when I’m there?”

Shireen did not seem very enthusiastic about the idea, but said, “Devan would probably go with you.”

“It’s okay, we can do whatever you want when we’re there.” The next image was of Shireen’s father and a really exotic woman. “Hey, who’s she?” She held up the phone.

Shireen sighed. “That’s Melisandre.”

Arya had no idea who Melisandre was and was about to inquire further when she saw the next picture and gasped. “I can’t believe you have all this stuff where you live.”

“I should probably warn you.”

Arya remembered what Mum said when she gave permission over the phone. _You will be Shireen’s guest. Be considerate._ Shireen wasn’t the most athletic person Arya had ever met, although she was practically a champion sportswoman compared with Sansa. “I know you’re not real outdoorsy. Don’t worry. Even walking around would be great.”

“No. That’s not what I meant. It’s just . . .” Shireen exhaled deeply. 

Arya tore her eyes away from a photo of some really stunning rock formations and waited. 

“My parents aren’t very . . . um . . . they’re not conventional about their marriage. They’re . . . uh . . . kind of poly?”

“Okay?” Arya thought she knew what poly meant. It was the rest of the terms that sometimes confused her. It wasn’t that there weren’t LGBTQ people in Winterfell, it was just a lot more conservative back home and she wasn’t used to people being quite so politicized and open about it. 

“They’re pretty careful around me and they won’t be . . . demonstrative around you, but just in case you walk in on something, I thought you should know.”

Arya nodded. “I don’t mind about that stuff. They’re grownups.”

“Sometimes,” Shireen muttered half under her breath. 

“It’s not a problem for me,” Arya assured her. 

“Are you certain your parents are fine with you going home with me for two whole weeks?”

Arya handed the phone back to Shireen. “Oh, yeah. They agreed right off the bat. The only one who put up a fuss was Sansa.” She made a face. “She said I’m ‘spoiling things.’ Again.” 

“Spoiling what? How?”

“Who knows? She says that every time I breathe. According to her, I’ve spoiled like every date she ever had. As if those boys were anything special.” Arya rolled her eyes. “It’s like she’s got this image of how something should be, and if I move or speak, I ruin it. It’s stupid. Mum said she would grow out of it and I thought we were getting along better, but I guess I was wrong.”

As with every time in the past that Sansa had lobbied this accusation, it made very little sense to Arya. She was still going home to Winterfell. It would just be two weeks later. It was fine with Mum and Dad and besides, every time Sansa had come back from uni, she’d spent most of her time with her high school friends. Even now, it wasn’t like Sansa went out of her way to see or include her. 

Shireen cocked her head. “Why don’t you ask her?”

* * *

**Shireen: Arya wants to go zip lining.**  
 **Devan: Your mum is never going to let you do that! Your dad won’t let you either and you know it!**

It was true. The last thing either one of her parents would ever let her do was go careening down some flimsy cable to her certain death. Fortunately, this was not something that remotely appealed to Shireen either.

**Shireen: I thought you could do it with her.**  
**Devan: Are you out of your mind?**  
**Shireen: Maybe.**

She waited. Devan liked doing outdoorsy things. If he didn’t, there was always Stan, although Mrs. Seaworth was usually pretty protective of her two youngest. 

**Devan: I love you, but no.**  
**Shireen: It was worth a try. I just want her to have a good time.**  
**Devan: It’s still weeks away. I know you like to plan, but we have time to figure out what to show the GD.**

“GD” meant giant dork and it was still how Devan usually referred to Arya. On first learning of her new nickname, Arya’s mouth had split into a huge grin. 

**Shireen: I told her.**

She didn’t bother to clarify. It wasn’t necessary. Devan would know what she meant. 

**Devan: And?**  
**Shireen: She didn’t seem to have a problem with it.**

Devan had argued against her telling Arya about the situation. It was none of her business, he said. Even if she was really a nice person after all, why did Shireen need to tell Arya about the very confusing relationships their parents had? 

Shireen had told Arya for the simple reason that if she was going to be staying somewhere for two weeks where it was possible she could wander into some gross adult weirdness, she would want to know. 

**Devan: Are you sure?**

Shireen didn’t hesitate before typing back “yes.” Arya was a lot of things, but she was very inclusive. It didn’t seem to matter to her what people were or who they were. She was equally friendly with everyone. Shireen was judicious in what she emailed her parents about. The conversation Arya had struck up at an honors student reception with someone who turned out to be an associate dean made the cut, but Shireen decided neither of her parents needed to know that she and her roommate were now on casual speaking terms with the prostitute who always seemed to be buying the dumplings at the tiny Pentoshi market on Fourth at the same time they were. 

**Shireen: She’s a good person. Like your dad.**

On the other side of the room, Arya was deep in a phone conversation with her sister. 

**Devan: We could bring her up to the tops of the ruins. It’ll be off-season so we can do it for cheap.**

He had other ideas. There were some trails they could hike and he thought that Maric would be fine with taking them out in the boat. But on the subject of zip lining, Devan was firm before signing off to leave for class: It was a no go.

Arya hung up the phone. She looked pleased. 

“Did you sort out the argument?”

“What? No. Well, maybe?” Arya sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “Sansa said I would understand after we had coffee on Tuesday.” She shrugged. “It’ll be something stupid. It always is. But that’s not the important part. She and Margaery are going somewhere for the weekend and they asked me to take care of Tunie.”

Shireen waited it out. Arya wasn’t the most concise speaker, but Shireen had learned that if she let her just ramble, the whole picture would gradually emerge. 

“Tunie’s their dog. It’s short for ‘Petunia,’ which is a really stupid name for a terrier. When we had the direwolves, Sansa actually named hers ‘Lady.’ Can you imagine?”

Sometimes you had to keep her on track, though. “Their trip?”

“Oh, yeah. She said I could stay at their place if I wanted. I asked if you could too and she said yes.” Arya looked at her earnestly. “Shireen, _we could use their shower._ ”

Shireen immediately understood. They would be able to take showers with total privacy and without the need for flip-flops. “When are they leaving?”

“Tonight, she said. There’s a list of stuff I have to do for Tunie, but it’s all easy. She’s a nice dog,” Arya allowed. “They don’t come back till Monday. I have class till 9:45 and I still have to finish my lab between now and then so it'll be too late to go tonight, but I’ll stop off and let Tunie out and walk her. But maybe we could go tomorrow after class. We just have to clean up after ourselves.” Now Arya looked doubtfully at her half of the room. “I can be neat if I have to,” she said after a long moment.

“Where are they going?”

“I don’t know. Some spa, I think? It’s probably so they can go out with their boyfriends or whatever. Who cares?”

“They have boyfriends? I thought they were a—”

“—I don’t know,” Arya said interrupting. “Tunie is kind of sweet. We could take her to that dog park on top of the hill and then we could get pizza and not have to worry about stupid people who play Taylor Swift at all hours or who try to make us sign up for some stupid rally or try to steal our shampoo. It’s going to be great!”

* * *

Sansa checked off _Arrange for Arya to take care of Tunie_ from her list and surveyed the remaining items. “It’s all set. She’ll come over tomorrow night and she’ll handle everything.” Sansa suspected that Arya’s enthusiasm about pet sitting had more to do with the chance to stay in an apartment with a private bathroom and with Tunie herself than with apologizing for messing everything up or from any sisterly desire to help her out, but it didn’t matter.

“Is she going to be able to take her for walks and give her the medicine?”

“It should be fine. She’s already got the keys and it’s not like it will be her first time taking care of an animal. If Arya can give eye drops to a direwolf, she can manage to give heartworm pills to our sweetling.” She curled up on the edge of the sofa and hugged Tunie. One of the best parts about living in their own apartment was that they could have a dog. She was going to miss the Wolfswood terrier, but she and Margaery needed to get away, even if it was just for a long weekend. In particular, she thought Margaery could use some time to relax. 

“When are you going to tell her about us?”

Tunie fussed and leapt down from the sofa. 

The plan had been to tell her siblings the first week of Intersession that she was gay and in a serious relationship. Sansa had worked it all out. But then she’d learned that Arya wasn’t going to be there. Arya hadn’t even had the courtesy to tell her. Sansa had only found out because of a casual comment of Mum’s. When Sansa suggested to Margaery that she would wait till Arya got to Winterfell, Margaery had flipped for some reason that Sansa still had yet to understand. 

“I set that up too. I’m going to have her come over by herself on Tuesday after her classes. I would have said Monday, but we’re going to be tired from the trip.”

Margaery considered. “All right. I guess that’s fine.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Sansa told her. “In four weeks everyone will know and we can be totally open.” That seemed to mollify Margaery. Sansa consulted her list and checked off a few more tasks. It was weird. Somehow Margaery had gone from being supremely self-assured to almost anxious in less than a semester.

“Gender equality is very important,” Margaery announced as she started up a documentary on the subject from Netflix. 

Make that defensive, Sansa thought. “Okay,” she agreed, as she discarded her list for her sketch pad. “Put your legs behind you. Yes, like that.”

“I want to watch this.”

“It’s your profile I want so there’s no problem.” 

The documentary was on the deadly serious side, but Sansa was focused on her drawing—or trying to—periodically Margaery would pause it in order to reiterate the significance of trying to enact legislation to help with much-needed change or stating with defiance that the voting contingent who was interested in social justice was larger than most people thought.

This had been a pattern for the last month or so. Margaery was innately political, but lately she’d been involved in a lot more social justice causes ranging from the homeless to refugee welfare to matters of public health. She’d go to some rally or lecture and return full of justifications for the time she’d devoted to it.

After the third instance, Sansa set down her sketch pad. “Do I make you feel like you have to explain yourself to me? You don’t. You know that, right? I love that you care about solving the world’s problems.” 

“Gran says I should leave the lunatic fringe alone and focus on mainstream stuff.”

Sansa had yet to meet Olenna Tyrell, but from everything Margaery had said, it was clear her grandmother was a formidable woman. “You’ve got lots of time before you have to worry about your platform.”

“I make my own decisions,” Margaery said. It sounded like she was trying to convince herself this was so.

That was it. Something was really wrong. Sansa picked up the remote and turned off the TV. “Baby, what’s going on?”

Margaery twisted her lip. “I don’t know. For the first time in forever, I don’t know.” She got up on her knees. “You’re the only thing that’s certain for me right now.” 

The ferocity of the kiss stunned Sansa, but it was not unwelcome, neither was what followed. They hadn’t ever had sex like this. They were playful, romantic, loving, and it had always been entirely satisfying, but now it was as if they were both driven by this desperate . . . need. 

Afterward, as they lay panting on the floor, Sansa looked to the right and saw that the living room littered with the clothing they’d ripped from each other’s bodies, the stuff from the surfaces they’d knocked over, including pieces of at least one broken lamp, and she didn’t care. “Feel better?”

“That helped,” Margaery said. She sat up and saw what Sansa had been staring at. “Wow.” She laughed. “We should clean up.”

“No.”

“Or get into bed?”

Sansa shook her head. “No. We’re staying right here,” she said wondering at herself. She pulled Margaery back down and enveloped her in another embrace. 

At the startled yap from Tunie, they both glanced up to see Arya, standing at the threshold of the room, keys in one hand, Tunie in the other, mouth opened wide, grey eyes filled with shock.

* * *

“You don’t understand, Shireen. They were . . . they’re a couple!”

This was a new Arya for Shireen. She had never seen her roommate like this. 

“Sansa and Margaery are together!”

Shireen nodded. “And?”

“Wait. What? You knew? _They told you?_ ” 

“They didn’t tell me anything. I just assumed they were.”

Arya flopped down on her bed. “It was so weird. Their living room . . .”

Shireen thought about her uncle Renly’s home and wondered if Arya’s sister went in for erotic art. 

“I walked in on them!”

This Shireen understood. She got up, found a bottle of water from their mini-fridge, placed it next to Arya, move the pile of papers onto the desk, and sat down next to her. 

“Sansa was screaming at me that it was tomorrow I was supposed to go over, not tonight.” Arya hugged her pillow. “She said I messed up like I always mess up. Shireen, I didn’t mean to . . . I didn’t know. Why didn’t she tell me?”

“I don’t know.” Shireen recalled the first time she’d walked in on her father and Melisandre and then the other time with Mr. Seaworth. _She was supposed to be in school, Selyse._ “You didn’t do anything wrong. You made a mistake.”

“You knew.” This time it was a statement and not a question. “Why didn’t _you_ tell me?”

“I thought . . . it wasn’t my business. I guessed. Margaery’s brother and his wife made a point of asking you to dinner with them. The way they act together. They’re going to a spa together. I guessed,” Shireen repeated. 

“But . . . my family included you at Homecoming.”

“Because you asked them to,” Shireen said. “And because they felt sorry for me.”

“No. They liked you,” Arya insisted. “It wasn’t because—”

Shireen shook her head. “Maybe not by the end. Look, this does not have to be a big deal. Your sister is gay. So are a lot of people. My parents are both bisexual. It’s not that uncommon.”

“That’s not why I’m upset. They were both totally naked and it was like a windstorm had destroyed their apartment. They were . . .”

“Yeah. I know. It’s weird.”

“You don’t understand.”

Shireen sighed. “I do. Remember I told you my parents were poly? Well, over the years, I’ve seen them doing . . . stuff like that with other people. They never meant for me to and they were always really sorry that I had been exposed to it, but it happened, and I do understand. It’s unsettling. At least your sister is just with one person. It’s less . . . confusing.”

“She dated boys all through high school.”

Shireen had books on this subject, but as they had been written for a younger audience, were at home, and had never helped her all that much, she doubted they would help Arya. “She might be bi, or maybe she just wasn’t out yet.”

Arya thought about it. “I guess.”

“Are you okay about her being gay?”

“That’s not the problem!” Arya punched the pillow. “She kept saying I spoiled everything. I’m not like her—I don’t mean about her being gay. I mean . . . I’m not like _her_.”

Shireen nodded. “I know what you meant.”

“Sansa does everything perfectly, all of the time. I don’t. I can’t. I mess up. I try. I tried for such a long time, but I’m not . . .”

Shireen wasn’t really sure what to say or do. Her personal experiences weren’t helpful if this was the real problem. Her parents _did_ love her. Their feelings for her had never been the issue. “You will calm down. Your sister is going to calm down.” At least Shireen hoped they both would. “And then you need to talk this out with her.”

* * *

The dorm room was a study in contrasts, Margaery thought as she followed Shireen into it. Shireen grabbed a backpack from the neat half of the room. On her side everything was stowed with almost mathematical precision. She had dozens of books, but each was carefully aligned with the next on the shelves. The framed pictures on her wall were renderings of mechanisms of some sort, the nature of which Margaery couldn’t even guess. The only personal elements were a couple of framed photographs on the desk and two intricately carved wooden figures: a stag and a doe.

“I’m going to the library to study,” Shireen said. “Arya, call me if you need me.”

Arya nodded, keeping her steady grey eyes fixed on Margaery.

“I thought we should talk,” Margaery said after the door had shut behind Shireen.

Arya sat on her bed, back to the wall, legs swinging over the edge. 

Sansa had always said that Arya was a slob, and Margaery could see it now. Her half of the room wasn’t dirty, but it was messy and it was chaotic. Like her roommate, Arya also had framed photographs of her family, but where Shireen had three, Arya had dozens. The posters on her side of the room were pinned to the wall with thumb tacks. There was barely an inch of space between one of Winterfell United’s football team and an outsized recruiting poster for The Night’s Watch. 

“Sansa is sorry for the way you found out,” Margaery said again. This was not exactly true. Her gentle Sansa was furious, angry in a way that Margaery had never seen before, but she was also scared and worried that Arya was going to tell their siblings before she had a chance to. 

“Why didn’t she just tell me?”

“The plan was for her to tell you and your brothers during Intersession.” Margaery gestured to a chair. “Can I sit down?”

“May I,” Arya said.

“What?”

“Can means you’re able to. May means you’re asking permission.”

Margaery hadn’t realized Arya was such a stickler for grammar. “You’re right,” she said, smiling. “May I?”

“No.”

Or not so much a stickler as a bitch. Perhaps this had been a mistake. She should have let Sansa do this. 

“That’s not my chair. That’s Shireen’s. She probably wouldn’t mind, but I try to be considerate about other people's feelings, even if Sansa doesn’t think I do.” Arya pointed to the one piled with books. “Just set those anywhere.”

Margaery placed the books on the floor and sat down. “As I was saying. She meant to tell you all at once during the first week of Intersession. She told your parents a few months ago.”

“Oh.” Arya chewed on her lip. “Is that why she went psycho on me when she found out I was going to visit Shireen first?”

Sansa was always so calm, so gentle until she wasn’t. 

“She’s not like that with you, I guess.” Arya punched the pillow she was holding against her chest. “I didn’t know. Shireen got permission for me to visit, but just for those first two weeks. Sansa never told me that she was—Mum and Dad know?”

“Yes.”

The obvious tension in Arya’s shoulders relaxed. “So I can talk to them about this?”

Margaery resisted the urge to correct her grammar. “Then you haven’t spoken to anyone?”

“Just Shireen. I had to. I was so upset. She won’t say anything. She promised.”

No, she’d been wrong, Margaery thought. Arya wasn’t a bitch, she was just upset and confused. “It’s just until Sansa tells your brothers. I wanted us to be open about this a long time ago, but Sansa is very cautious. She wanted us to be sure that we were serious about each other.”

“She’s a control freak.” But Arya seemed calmer now. “I got mixed up about the date. I didn’t mean to walk in on you like that.”

“No, of course not.” Margaery knew Sansa would admit that too once she calmed down. “Mistakes happen.”

“Not according to Sansa.” Arya sat up straighter and put the pillow back on the head of the bed. “Do you love her?”

“I do.”

“That’s okay then.”

Margaery smiled. “I’m relieved. We were worried that you weren’t going to understand.”

“That Sansa is gay? I don’t care about that,” Arya scoffed as if it was immaterial. “I was upset because of the way—”

“We’re not usually so . . .” Margaery paused as she selected and discarded a number of descriptors, finally settling on “uninhibited. I was upset about something and it got . . .”

“Uninhibited?”

“Yes.” 

Arya grinned and then tried and failed to turn it back into a scowl. 

“So I’ll tell Sansa what we talked about and it will all be settled.”

“I want an apology.”

Margaery had risen to her feet and had been about to turn, but she stopped now. “An apology?”

“For how she yelled at me. I’m tired of it. I don’t set out to mess up stuff. If she just talked to me like she does with everyone else, it wouldn’t be so hard. Even when we’re not fighting, it’s like she’s always on edge afraid I’m going to ruin stuff for her. She’s always been like that ever since I can remember. Shireen said I should tell her how it makes me feel.”

They were now in uncharted waters and Margaery knew this was not something she should wade into. “I’ll let Sansa know that you have some concerns and you can take those up with her.”

“Okay.” Arya got to her feet too. “What were you upset about?”

“Oh, it’s not important.”

“You trashed your living room,” Arya pointed out. 

“Well, that wasn’t because . . .” Margaery drew in a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about my future career and what I want to do. It’s not what my family wants for me.”

Arya absorbed this. “You don’t want to be a politician then?”

“Oh, I do. It’s just . . . I look around the world and there’s so much wrong with it. I want to make a difference, to fix things.”

Sansa’s sister nodded. “Someone has to.”

“My family is much more conservative, more mainstream.”

“Do they care about you?”

“Oh yes! That’s not the prob—”

“—Shireen says that people are who they are and you can’t change that. If they love you, your family will be okay with whatever you want to do.”

* * *

Sansa arrived at the quad by the Math and Engineering buildings. Arya had designated this for a meeting place. It was deserted save for Shireen Baratheon, who sat reading on one of the benches.

Shireen glanced up from her book. “Arya’s running late. She asked me to tell you.”

She should have known. To Arya, punctuality was an unfamiliar concept. “Thanks. How late?”

“Ten minutes.”

Sansa sat down. Margaery had assured her it was fine. Everything was going to be all right. Shireen knew, but Margaery thought she could be trusted to keep quiet for a few weeks, and even if she did talk, it wasn’t as if she had Sansa's brothers' contact information. 

“I really like Arya.”

“I’m glad,” Sansa said, startled. “It’s good she finally has a friend who’s not some homeless person she met on the street or a convicted felon.”

Shireen inserted a bookmark, closed the novel, and looked at her. “Did she ever tell you about Weasel?”

Sansa shook her head. “Is she a pet or something?”

“Weasel is a person. We still don’t know her name. Arya said she and Gendry found her a couple of weeks after the semester started. She was rooting through garbage bins looking for something to eat. She was covered in bruises. She wouldn’t speak and I guess she flinched every time someone came near her. Arya said she tried to take her to the police to get help, but Weasel wouldn’t go.”

Sansa opened her mouth, but something about Shireen’s stern expression made her stop and listen.

“Gendry said Arya kept going back with food until Weasel trusted her enough and then Arya just ordered him and Hot Pie to take Weasel in.”

“Who is Gendry? Who’s—” She was about to ask about “Hot Pie,” when Shireen cut her off. 

“Gendry is a nontraditional student who Arya met somewhere. He’s . . .”

“Another stray.”

Shireen was stowing her book away now. “Actually, I think he’s one of my first cousins, but that doesn’t matter. Gendry is decent. Just like your father and my father and Mr. Seaworth are decent. Like Arya is. Anyhow, they let Weasel stay with them. She still won’t talk, but Arya finally found a social worker who is trying to help her.”

Sansa wasn’t sure what this was about. She remembered some of the things Margaery had been talking about—how there were people who desperately needed help and who were falling through the system. She settled on, “Dad says that Arya has a big heart.”

“Yes. She does. She doesn’t always do things the way most people do and she makes mistakes, but she tries and she hurts just like most people hurt.”

Sansa could see Arya in the distance trudging up the hill. 

“I always wanted brothers and sisters, but I guess it’s hard sometimes.”

That Sansa could agree with. 

“You’re not kids anymore. Arya is never going to be anybody but Arya. You’re lucky to have her in your family. Maybe you should tell her that once in a while.”

* * *

They were in the same Starbucks that Sansa had taken her to before. Sansa hadn’t said much during the walk.

“Margaery explained stuff.” Shireen had divulged a lot about her own family too, so much that Arya was beginning to get why Shireen seemed wiser than her years. “I just wish you’d told me.”

“I was waiting for Intersession.”

“Why?”

Sansa fiddled with the napkin her vanilla nonfat latte sat on. She’d ordered whipped cream with it, which seemed stupid to Arya. Why would a person drink nonfat milk _and_ get whipped cream? But there were bigger questions to be answered. “Because I wanted to do it all at once. I thought if I went to each of you separately, you’d talk to each other and that it could get confusing.”

“Confusing how?” Arya still couldn’t get this. They were a very liberal family. None of them were homophobic.

“I can just picture it now. I tell Robb, who goes ahead and then tells Theon who tells everyone else. I wanted to control for that. I knew it was going to be super hard to tell everyone and I thought with one conversation, I could just rip the Band Aid off and get it over with. I’ve been working on my speech for over a month.”

That was stupid too, but more worthy of actually questioning it aloud. “A speech? Why not just tell us?”

“I . . .”

“You make things too complicated sometimes,” Arya said. “We’re not like some family in an afterschool special. You just need to say it and everything will be fine.”

“I can’t help it. I like things to be ordered. I’m a perfectionist. It drives Margaery crazy too, but it’s who I am,” Sansa said.

Arya thought about this as she ripped off the top of another sugar packet and stirred it into her Red Eye.

“That’s your fourth sugar.”

“What do you think is in your whipped cream and vanilla syrup? Vitamin C?” Arya snapped.

“I guess we do share some stuff in common.” Sansa looked at her drink. “They just taste so good.”

Around them customers bustled. The door opened and shut with such frequency, that the drafts were starting to feel normal.

“I freaked Margaery out that night.”

Arya held up a hand. “I didn’t want to hear the details from Robb when he slept with his girlfriend, so I don’t need to hear about—”

“I meant by my tantrum when you walked in on us.”

“Oh.”

“I am sorry about that.” Sansa stared into the whipped cream cloud for a moment. “I know I get unreasonably angry around you. It’s like I turn into an eleven year old every time. I shouldn’t do that. Maybe I should take an anger management class or something.” She looked up. “Or put myself in time outs.”

Arya felt herself smiling. “Shireen says maybe it’s because we’re the only girls in the family. She says boys don’t do this stuff.”

“I thought she was an only child.”

“She is, but she’s really close to a family that has seven sons.” It was true too. Rickon and Bran were near in age, but while they squabbled, they were never as hostile as she and Sansa. 

“Shireen told me some things about you.”

“I am still a slob,” Arya admitted. It was a sore point between them. “I am working on it.”

“Things that made me proud you’re my sister.”

Arya became very engaged in making sure the sugar was dissolved in her coffee until she could control the way she was suddenly feeling. 

“And made me feel like I didn’t know you at all.” Sansa had ideas how she could rectify this, complicated ideas.

Now Arya withdrew the spoon and faced her sister. “How about we just start by having coffee once a week?”

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Vana](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana) for beta reading this and to [Mother of Firkins](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MotherofFirkins/pseuds/MotherofFirkins) for providing me with a name for Sansa and Margaery's dog.


End file.
